Up until recently, I considered myself to be a smarter than average being of superior intellect. I’m not saying I am the first person they’d come to on a plane in the event someone needed to have brain surgery mid-flight with nothing but a bag of snack peanuts and a spork, but I could solve just about any random puzzle or riddle thrown at me. However, that all changed a few hours into the new atmospheric puzzle game 7th Sector. 

The game starts off simple enough, with a vague image hidden within a static infused image on an older style TV. As you move the left thumb stick, you’ll find it distorts the image further, but if you push in just the right spot, you can leave your electronic prison and move along the cables that are tethered to it. Speeding along the twisted and tangled cables is where you’ll spend most of your time as a little spark, making your way between electronic devices of various forms, solving puzzles, and taking in some of the darkest, oftentimes disturbing sights since Limbo. 

The dark setting is outright the game’s biggest strength – painting a picture of a dystopian society in the midst of an event that is tearing the civilization around it piece by piece without a single line of dialogue. You’ll proceed through the network of cables and components that are beautifully recreated in a photorealistic way that’ll have you wondering if you’re actually playing a game or looking through a window into some sort of alternate dimension through your own TV set. You’ll witness the aftermath of what I can only assume was the grisly end for the person lying in a pool of their own blood, suicides, and eerie beings who visit the inhabitants all while clinging to what appears to be their loved ones, usually requiring you to draw your own conclusions. The mystery of whether you were the cause of the event, a victim, or just a casual observer is what clung to me throughout my time with the game like garments stuck together straight from the dryer with a ton of static cling.

While nothing about the game is outright terrible, the controls didn’t receive the same love and care that the presentation did. Overall, the title has a pretty basic control scheme, but as you progress and begin controlling the bigger machines later into the game, the controls become a little more involved, and at times extremely frustrating without even so much of a hint of a tutorial. Even when controlling the simple spark during the early set pieces, it never feels like that game is slow for a reason, outside of forcing you to take in the amazing sights that take place in the background.

Initially, I found the puzzles that break up the atmospheric segments to be overly easy and quite slow, where it felt like this was a children’s puzzle game presented in what was clearly too dark of a world for your average elementary school student. This quickly changed as the game introduced complex puzzles more and more frequently, incorporating mild logic, basic knowledge of electricity, advanced patterns, mathematics, and the ability to flawlessly assemble four different Lego sets after they’ve been opened, dumped into a big tub, and the instructions and boxes have been set on fire.

Occasionally, you will find a hint tucked away in the backdrop, but more often than not you’ll have to rely on your own wits or trial and error; in my case, the latter was almost always the path forward. There are a handful of puzzles that took me much longer than I care to admit to solve, but the worst offender (like many of the other more frustrating tasks) involved a series of scrolling patterns that flashed on the screen in a sequence, requiring me to press the action button in the correct order, which seemed to add more and more options the further I got, all while speeding up. Making matters worse, a number of these puzzles are randomized, so a walk through isn’t really a viable option if that is your go-to in these situations.

My frustration came to a head even later in the game, as I was tasked with solving a similar puzzle that assigned numbers to a pattern that really wasn’t as much of a pattern as it was a series of groupings that looked like jumbled blocks piled up by someone who doesn’t know how to play Tetris properly. I spent a solid 45 minutes or more on this only to discover that it wasn’t even required. That’s right, an extra puzzle that didn’t even do anything of substance and was there for the sole purpose of messing with the player. Not only did I feel incredibly stupid, but it also made me question if every task that followed was actually needed or even worth my time.

7th Sector is by no means a bad game; it’s just so different that it makes it hard to recommend without the disclaimer that this is an adventure that won’t be for everyone. The vague puzzles will require you to think outside of the box, but they are so far outside of the realm of common sense that while they will give you a much deserved feeling of accomplishment, it often comes at the cost of your own sanity and mental well-being.

7 out of 10

Pros

• A Stunning Dystopian Backdrop
• Vast Variety of the Puzzles…

Cons

• …That Often Don’t Make Sense
• Movement is Slow and Clunky at Times
• Lack of Player Direction

7th Sector was developed by Носков Сергей and published by Sometimes You. It is available on NS, PC, PS4, and X1. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of 7th Sector, check out the official Steam page.

 

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